I think I'm gonna sell my '97 Mark...

[thehamm99]

I love this car. I love to drive it. I actually love to work on it. I've had a lot of fun with it the last 7 months, and I am always going to want to come up with another Mark when I can afford one, but for now I really need the money to pay for school, so...

1997 LSC, Black, Tan interior, 81.5k miles

pros:
* F#$%king fun to drive!
* Never had even the slightest engine or tranny problems
* I drive about 40/60 city/highway and get 20mpg avg. (I usually baby it)
* Strutmasters coil springs/shocks in front and rear
* All electronics (doors, windows, seats, etc.) work
* I replaced the battery, so it's only 5-6 months old
* I've only put about 900 miles per month on the car, and no long trips
* Newer brakes
* newer spark plugs (I've looked at them...I went to change them and they were almost brand new).
* A/C blows Ice cold, heater/defroster works but not right now (blend door, see cons)

cons:
* Will need paint. I sanded off all the clear coat peel and HVLP'd it with rustoleum. Looks a lot better than it did, but still needs paint.
* Had too many air ride issues so I scrapped it for coils
* I replaced blend door when I bought it, the new one broke already, so currently it is positioned to blow cold air (I can fix it if I have to...arrgg).
* One of the rims was leaking, had it cleaned up and resealed, no problems since
* Front end needs some work (control arms, bushings, etc.), a little rough and noisy.
* Windows and headlights are hazy.
* I cut off the lasagna rear trim, haven't got a kit or any material to fix it yet
* Currently doesn't have a driver's side sun visor (I have the visor, but the cloth was ripped, and it's a pain in the a*$ to try to repair).

I'd say the exterior is about a 8/10 as far as straightness (not paint).
The interior is probably a 7/10. Leather is worn, but no rips. The two plastic pieces that cover the seat bottom/electric controls don't look good.



Not sure what else...I want to be perfectly honest about the car, and it would be great to sell it to a Mark enthusiast.

I'm near Sacramento, CA.

I'm hoping to get +/- $2600 ??

I was planning on steam cleaning the carpets and seeing what I could do to get the water spots/haze off the glass and then putting it up on craigslist...but I'd rather offer it here first.

 

[kaha]

* Will need paint. I sanded off all the clear coat peel and HVLP'd it with rustoleum. Looks a lot better than it did, but still needs paint.

Could someone please detail the proper way to do this? I have that nasty white clear-coat peel too (looks horrible, especially on a black car), and it's gonna be quite some time til I have the 4 grand or so for a nice paint job. I'd just like to make it look a little better until then.

That said (didn't mean to threadjack, sorry), the car looks decent and I can't see you having any problems getting your asking price for it. Would make a very nice DD.

 

[thehamm99]

No problem.
I'm not going to in any way claim the paint job my sister and I did looks "good," but it looked like a broken down POS before...so...

1) Thorough wash. Then another wash with simple green mixed in.

2) I sanded the whole car with 400 grit.

I dry sanded, but I read you can do either way. Most of the clear coat peel came off with the 400 grit and slightly more pressure (by hand sanding) where needed. The only spot on the car where you can see where there was peeling/fading is on the rear bumper (plastic), which I guess I didn't do a good enough job of sanding.

3) We used "Frog Tape" to tape everything off, and cardboard paper from home depot (the big roll) for the glass. ABSOLUTELY ZERO overspray or bleed through.

4) Wipe the whole car down with mineral spirits on "tack cloth".

I was able to find some tack cloth at the 3rd place I went to. It's only like $3 but some places dont have it. It's cheese cloth dipped in wax. Don't go too heavy on the mineral spirits. A little goes a very long way.

5) The gun - HVLP $30 at Harbor Freight Tools, had my own old as he11 compressor, worked fine.

6) The paint - Bought a gallon of Rustoleum gloss black, only used about 1/4 of it.

7) The mix - Regardless of what the paint can says, you'll need to mix in more mineral spirits than you think. By the 2nd or 3rd coat we were at a 3:1 paint to mineral spirits, and to be honest we never got the paint thin enough. It dried very fast, which was convenient, but the thickness resulted in more bumpiness and orange peel. I think a 2:1 ratio of paint to thinner might be best. But I had an old fender to mess with and experiment on...that's advisable.

I never got around to wet sanding and buffing after weeks of the paint being dry.

All in all I spent about $100, and if I decided to sand and retry it I would only need to spend another $20 or so for tape, etc.

It was a real fun project that took us about 2 or 3 partial days from start to finish, and I'm sure if we did it again we'd only get it looking better.

As you can tell I'm no expert, but if you've got a compressor handy, for $100 you can make a horrible looking car into a much less horrible looking car

 

[thehamm99]

...and anybody who wastes time with that "rolling" method is pretty crazy to me...

 

[97MarkJA]

I'm sure you need to do something with the paint and it sounds like it was your first time. Gotta give you credit for that. I'm sure it looks better than it did.
My dad has a black and tan just like that. 81k is good for mileage, headlights and front end are common; not sure about the hazy windows? Rear window trim is also common when they sit in the sun and heat all the time.
The only real issue I see is it would need to be stripped pretty much bare to paint... And when I say stripped.. like with aircraft paint removed. Rustoleum is no fun to sand, cloggs up the sand paper right away and you can't paint over it with urethane. Expensive process. Comes down to time or money, might be a good project for someone but I don't know that you'll get 2600 for it.
In reality its probably a 1600 car, but you've told us all the issues.
Someone else may chime in but you might have better luck posting it on Craigslist.
Hope that doesn't sound harsh.

 

[97MarkJA]

...and anybody who wastes time with that "rolling" method is pretty crazy to me...

Lol... I've seen some pretty good looking roller jobs, only problem is when they get carried away and get it on thick. Doesn't cure right and ends up cracking.

 

[thehamm99]

I'll get well over $1600, I'm sure of that.

I actually did the "aircraft remover" stripping on a 1970 mustang. Didn't take all that long, and the paint job looked real good after.